Newly famous journalism professor Robert Jensen was on Michael Medved's radio show last week. In an attempt to soften his image as a truly idiotic Stalinist, he said that he deplored the Taliban government in Afghanistan, and that it should be removed. When Medved asked if the US should remove it, Jensen said that the United States did not have the authority to do this. Such authority could only come from the United Nations.

Quickly, Medved responded by asking if Jensen had supported the Gulf War. Jensen replied that he had not. How could that be, Medved asked, since the UN sanctioned the Gulf War. Medved then went for the jugular, as he should have, concluding that the only consistency Jensen has is to be anti-American at every opportunity. No other explanation of Jensen's positions is possible.

While Jensen is not alone in his twisted belief system, it serves no purpose to give any more publicity to his fellow travelers. For far too long, we have been excessively tolerant of the pernicious Left. Even the worst of them are sympathetically portrayed as "well-meaning" or "idealistic." There are still very few media outlets that have a single unkind word to say about the Hollywood Ten or the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Would it surprise you that the sons of the 110% guilty Soviet atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, along with their red diaper baby friends, still think, nearly 50 years later, that these despicable criminals are martyred heroes?

Let Katha Polit, Susan Sontag, and the rest prattle on with their moral relativism nonsense. The simple fact is that moral relativism cannot exist as a practical philosophy, and is self-defeating. If there is no objective right or wrong, how can you complain if I steal your wallet? That theft is wrong is only your opinion. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter? Please. Exactly whose freedom were our recent terror perps fighting for? The cheap sloganeering is embarrassing, but given who is being embarrassed, it works for me.

While our current state of alert and aroused patriotism has exposed the vaunted intellectualism of the Left to be a pathetic sick joke, there is a larger issue here. Grandly enough, it is the problem of Evil. The brilliant author of Job struggled with this, and in the process created a literary masterpiece.

Written some time between the seventh and fifth centuries B.C., Job teaches that even the just may suffer here on Earth, and their sufferings are a test of their fidelity. Yet, they shall be rewarded in the end. Moreover, the finite human mind cannot probe the depths of the divine omniscience that governs the world. The problems we encounter can be solved by a broader and deeper awareness of God's power, presence, and wisdom.

Great stuff, but it is incompatible, of course, with atheism, and that's the problem. Acknowledging objective evil and objective good must assume a source of all morality, and can only lead to God. Confronted with apparent evil, though, our contemporary intellectualoids must either reject their atheism, or reject what is plainly before their eyes. Predictably, if tragically, they choose to reject the existence of evil, and can only rationalize the recent acts in the most bizarre and moronic terms.

Deep inside, they have tremendous doubts about their philosophy, as many of them did about Bill Clinton, but pride and peer acceptance are strong forces. After all, if they were to change their point of view, not only would they be admitting that they were wrong all these years, but they wouldn't be invited to the best cocktail parties anymore.

Thus, they preach to us, the unwashed masses, that we must understand the root of the terrorists' pain. How have WE affected them? They are not evil. Who are we to judge?

But reality is closing in on them every day. It must be extremely uncomfortable for them to maintain such a counter-intuitive posture. Imagine Ebenezer Scrooge waking up on Christmas Day determined to be even more of a skinflint and a sociopath. Imagine the Capulets and Montagues deciding that the deaths of Romeo and Juliet should intensify their feud. Imagine Achilles killing Old King Priam when Priam begs for the body of his son Hector.

Imagine being a Leftist in America after September 11, 2001.

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